Vitalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bechtel ◽  
Robert C. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Movement Perception ◽  
The Third ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Mechanical Devices ◽  
Élan Vital ◽  
Mechanistic View

Vitalists hold that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things. In its simplest form, vitalism holds that living entities contain some fluid, or a distinctive ‘spirit’. In more sophisticated forms, the vital spirit becomes a substance infusing bodies and giving life to them; or vitalism becomes the view that there is a distinctive organization among living things. Vitalist positions can be traced back to antiquity. Aristotle’s explanations of biological phenomena are sometimes thought of as vitalistic, though this is problematic. In the third century bc, the Greek anatomist Galen held that vital spirits are necessary for life. Vitalism is best understood, however, in the context of the emergence of modern science during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena were extended to biological systems by Descartes and his successors. Descartes maintained that animals, and the human body, are ‘automata’, mechanical devices differing from artificial devices only in their degree of complexity. Vitalism developed as a contrast to this mechanistic view. Over the next three centuries, numerous figures opposed the extension of Cartesian mechanism to biology, arguing that matter could not explain movement, perception, development or life. Vitalism has fallen out of favour, though it had advocates even into the twentieth century. The most notable is Hans Driesch (1867–1941), an eminent embryologist, who explained the life of an organism in terms of the presence of an entelechy, a substantial entity controlling organic processes. Likewise, the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1874–1948) posited an élan vital to overcome the resistance of inert matter in the formation of living bodies.

Biology and Materials? Part I

MRS Bulletin ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 24-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Alper
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Basis ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Vital Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
Living Things ◽  
The Common ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Science Departments ◽  
First Time

Poets and philosophers have, through the ages, viewed organisms as the embodiment of the mysterious “Vital Force,” a unique non-earthly element required for the functioning of life processes.Biologists have seen, in living organisms, an adaptive, self-reproducing, evolving collection of molecules acting solely according to the laws of chemistry and physics.Historians speak of the iron or bronze ages and, more recently of the plastics (polymers) and the silicon ages. Materials science departments speak of metals, alloys, ceramics, and perhaps polymers—but not of genes.The “common man” has, it must be admitted, seen living organisms as a source of useful and important materials—wood for building; cotton, silk, and other fibers for textiles; horn, shell, and bone for tools and weapons; fats for lubricants; fur for clothingBut, in fact, few of us now think of materials when we think of living things. Neither do we think of DNA, protein, and carbohydrates when we think of materials.No, biologists have not been blackballed by materials scientists, chemists, and physicists. Until recently, they neither understood the processes by which life produces its materials nor even conceived of manipulating those processes to tailor the properties of the materials to our needs. Only within the past few years has the “biological revolution” expanded our understanding of the molecular basis for biological phenomena and our ability to control them. It is only now, for the first time, that one can point to a legitimate field of science based on mimicking, adapting, and controlling biological systems with the goal of producing novel materials with important, unique, and useful properties.

Historicity of Ecocriticism and Ecocritical History: An Introductory Overview

IJOHMN ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-52
Author(s):  
Jalal Uddin Khan
Keyword(s):  
Extended Family ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Amazon Rainforest ◽  
Sixth Grader ◽  
Leafcutter Ants ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Popular Magazine ◽  
Living Organisms

Overlapping and interconnected, interdisciplinary and heterogeneous, amorphous and multi-layered, and deep and broad as it is, countless topics on ecoliterature make ecocriticism a comprehensive catchall term that proposes to look at a text--be it social, cultural, political, religious, or scientific--from naturalist perspectives and moves us from “the community of literature to the larger biospheric community which […] we belong to even as we are destroying it” (William Rueckert). As I was in the middle of writing and researching for this article, I was struck by a piece of nature writing by an eleven year old sixth grader born to his (South Asian and American) mixed parents, both affiliated with Johns Hopkins and already proud to belong to the extended family of a Nobel Laureate in Physics. The young boy, Rizwan Thorne-Lyman, wrote, as his science story project, an incredibly beautiful essay, “A Day in the Life of the Amazon Rainforest.” Reading about the rainforest was one of his interests, I was told. In describing the day-long activities of birds and animals among the tall trees and small plants, the 2 pp.-long narrative actually captures the eternally continuing natural cycle of the Amazon. The budding naturalist’s neat classification of the wild life into producers (leafy fruit and flowering plants and trees), consumers (caimans/crocodiles, leafcutter ants, capuchin monkey), predators (macaws, harpy eagles, jaguars, green anaconda), decomposers (worms, fungi and bacteria), parasites (phorid flies) and scavengers (millipedes) was found to be unforgettably impressive. Also the organization of the essay into the Amazon’s mutually benefitting and organically functioning flora and fauna during the day--sunrise, midday, and sunset--was unmistakably striking. I congratulated him as an aspiring environmentalist specializing in rain forest. I encouraged him that he should try to get his essay published in a popular magazine like Reader’s Digest (published did he get in no time indeed![i]) and that he should also read about (and visit) Borneo in Southeast Asia, home to other great biodiverse rainforests of the world. I called him “soft names” as a future Greenpeace and Environmental Protection leader and theorist, a soon-to-be close friend of Al Gore’s. The promising boy’s understanding, however short, of the Amazon ecology and ecosystem and the biological phenomena of its living organisms was really amazing. His essay reminded me of other famous nature writings, especially those by Fiona Macleod (see below), that are the pleasure of those interested in the ecocriticism of the literature of place--dooryards, backyards, outdoors, open fields, parks and farms, fields and pastures, and different kinds of other wildernesses.   [i] https://stonesoup.com/post/a-day-in-the-life-in-the-amazon-rainforest/

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

The Death of the Ethic of Life

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Basl
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Biomedical Ethics ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Ethics Of Technology ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Moral Importance ◽  
Practical Concern ◽  
Living Organisms

According to the ethic of life, all living organisms are of special moral importance. Living things, unlike simple artifacts or biological collectives, are not mere things whose value is entirely instrumental. This book articulates why the ethic is immune to most of the standard criticisms raised against it, but also why such an ethic is untenable, why the domain of moral concern does not extend to all living things; it argues for an old conclusion in an entirely new way. To see why the ethic must be abandoned requires that we look carefully at the foundations of the ethic—the ways in which it is tightly connected to issues in the philosophy of biology and the sorts of assumptions it must draw on to distinguish the living from the nonliving. This book draws on resources from a variety of branches of philosophy and the sciences to show that the ethic cannot survive this scrutiny, and it articulates what the death of the ethic of life means in a variety of areas of practical concern, including environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, ethics of technology, and in philosophy more generally.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Status ◽  
Key Issues

This chapter discusses the key issues surrounding Perpetua’s life and her narrative, the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. It introduces the most perplexing circumstances around her life and times: the authorship of her Passio (which is written in at least three different hands); her life and family; the conditions of her martyrdom and of martyrdoms during the pre-Constantinian period; the status of martyrdom texts as personal, social, or historical documents; whether persecutions can be historically verified or were exaggerated by the Christians and others; and the afterlife of Perpetua and her text in writers from the third century to contemporary times. The introduction lays out the arguments for these thorny issues and tries to find a reasonable position on each one.

Letters from High to Low in the Graeco-Roman Period

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willy Clarysse
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
The Third ◽  
Total Lack

In this chapter, papyrus letters sent from superiors to their inferiors are studied on the basis of test cases ranging across the Graeco-Roman period in Egypt, from the third century BCE to the third century CE. This correspondence is drawn from four archival groups of texts: the archive of Zenon; the letters of L. Bellienus Gemellus and the letters of the sons of Patron; and the Heroninus archive. The letters are usually short, full of imperatives, and characterized by the absence of philophronetic formulae. Recurrent themes of the correspondence are urgency, rebukes, orders, and interdictions, and there is an almost total lack of polite phrases.

‘At last Roman, at last restored to the true light of Empire’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrastos Omissi
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Military ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter begins by considering what made the late Roman state distinctive from the early Empire, exploring the political developments of the later third century, in particular the military, administrative, and economic reforms undertaken by the tetrarchs. It then explores the presentation of the war between the tetrarchy and the British Empire of Carausius and Allectus (286‒96), taking as its core sources Pan. Lat. X, XI, and VIII. These speeches are unique in the panegyrical corpus, in that two of them (X and XI) were delivered while the usurpation they describe was still under way, the third (VIII) after it was defeated. In this chapter, we see how the British Empire was ‘othered’ as piratical and barbarian, and how conflict with it helped to create the distinctive ideology of the tetrarchy.

Inscriptions and the Narrative of Roman History

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Sources

This chapter offers an analysis of how inscriptions can complement the narratives of Roman history from the third century BCE to the third century CE provided in literary sources. They reveal certain historical events or details that would otherwise be unknown, and they supplement the information offered by the surviving Roman historians .

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